A day after a four-alarm fire ravaged the roof of an East Village building, residents recalled the harrowing experience as business owners dealt with damages.

“People were waving at me frantically like they knew me. They were pointing up and that’s when I saw flames,” said Trigger, a fifth-floor resident of the building on the corner of E. Houston Street and Avenue A, which had its roof erupt in fire at about 5:30 p.m. Thursday.

“I grabbed my fire extinguisher and tried to get to the roof. I opened one deadbolt. At the time there were no flames. Within minutes the whole door was engulfed.”

The building is under renovation and the fire was limited to the roof and top floor.

“Our unit has a patio and I saw little embers . . . So I came out with a bucket of water and just started to splash everything. Then I got burned and I looked up. That’s when I figured I should leave,” said Michael Kuddler, 42, who was asleep in his second-floor apartment when the fire started.

Kuddler sported a bandage on his right elbow to conceal the burn he suffered trying to douse flames.

He and his wife were in the process of retrieving their cats this afternoon, as investigators continued to examine the building.

“My baby-sitter called and said firefighters just evacuated the building. I dropped everything . . . By the time I got here, the fire was already out. It was an intense sight,” said Kuddler’s wife, Kathi Castro, 40.

The cause of the blaze remains under investigation, according to fire officials.

“Everything is wet. It smells bad. The ceiling came down,” said Bruce Lee, owner of Top Style Nails, a street-level nail salon that incurred water damage.

Tim Mortimer, proprietor of Discovery Wines on Avenue A, spent last night emptying 32-gallon garbage pails full of water he had scrambled to place under leaks in his shop’s ceiling.

“The fire didn’t get us. The water did,” he said, before adding, “Considering a building full of people slept somewhere else last night, a little water damage in the grand scheme of things is not a traumatizing event.”